Unlike children, who participate in schooling because of legal mandates and strong social and cultural forces, most adult students choose to participate in educational programs. Adults must make an active decision to participate in each class or tutoring session and often must overcome significant barriers to participate in educational services. Although some adults come to adult education10 programs with specific or short-term goals, most come with goals that require hundreds, if not thousands, of hours of instruction to achieve (Comings, Parrella, & Soricone, 1999; Reder, 2000). Every adult education program, therefore, should provide its students with services that help them persist in learning long enough to reach their educational goals. This chapter defines persistence, sets out the evidence for why we should pay attention to this issue, and reviews the persistence research. The chapter concludes by suggesting changes in policy and practice that might support higher levels of persistence, and new research that would provide evidence that these suggestions are useful.